Service Fees: Reasonable or Outrageous?

Recently, I responded to someone who was looking to transfer off an extremely low pop realm. He was asking what his options were, and I gave him 8 or 9 possible alternatives (not including quitting the game). Then, I told him, a while back, I paid $250 to move several alts from a very low pop realm to a newer med to high pop realm. In fact, a friend was getting ready to roll a new character there, so it worked out well on 2 fronts.

Anyway, I explained I spent more on concerts which lasted one time for a few hours and would have nothing really to show for it. At least with the paid transfer, I got to keep my alts, and did not have to worry about re-rolling and re-leveling profs again. There are those who feel the extremely low pop realms are either Blizzard's fault, Blizzard's responsibility to fix, or both. I don't disagree, but I also want to play the game, and not just sit and shout at them to change their ways.

I chose to pay and improve my position. What about you? What is your take on Blizzard's extremely low pop realms and paying to transfer?

I have no problem with people getting 1 transfer (can include all chars on the account) every 6 months or something like that. If you decide to transfer more than that then you can pay. It shouldn't be unlimited or there would be chaos.

The system right now is ridiculous though. You shouldn't ask players to buy your game, pay a subscription, and then pay to transfer because their server died or was dead and they didn't know it when they chose it. It's essentially an unlucky tax. You chose the the wrong server, pay $25 to have fun again.

Blizzard have stated themselves that the sole reason for the fee is to discourage people swapping all over the place on a whim. From a technical standpoint there is no good reason to charge money for it.

An ideal solution imo would be to put it on a similar cooldown to the item restoration, perhaps longer. 3 months? And when using up that 1 time cooldown you can transfer as many characters as you have from server X to server Y.

I'd be fine with a free one-time or once-every-X-months realm transfer, but I don't think it's necessary and I doubt it would help Blizzard out very much in the long run.

As it is now, if your server is dead, you are more than capable of creating a new character on a different server. Realm transfers are not required for you to play on a new server. That's why they call it a "service." You don't need it, but it's nice to have. Generally, these kinds of things (technically easy or not) are provided at a cost. You wouldn't expect a flower company to provide free delivery just because you spent $20 on flowers, would you?

Think of it this way: Blizzard spent dev time working on Realm Transfers. They have probably made that money back by now, but it still required a time/resource investment to create. Now consider Classic WoW, Burning Crusade, and WotLK. Blizzard has almost certainly sold enough copies of those that they recouped their development costs, right? So, why not have Classic WoW and the first two expansions be completely free?

Because that's a stupid business model -- just like allowing free realm transfers to everyone. I like free stuff just as much as everyone else, but I'm not greedy enough to suggest that Blizzard shouldn't charge for their services. I'm getting sick of these sense of entitlement that this community has.

What if for every month you paid or some service you purchased you got some sort of "point" or "credit" that you could use toward any blizzard service or product. The whole wallet idea was interesting but it only really mattered to RMAH D3 people.

I understand paying for Race changes, faction changes, but not appearance or server transfers. Given that servers have been in a bad spot for many years, with nothing but the awful CRZ to try and solve the problem, people should be allowed to come and go as they please at the rate of 1 ever month or 2 per character. I understand they probably have concerns about abusing an economy, trying to crash a server, etc, but nothing that justifies preventing people from playing with their friends or on a better server.

I also feel $25 is too much for any one service as it doesn't really increase their workload and is mostly automated. I think $10-$15 would be a much more acceptable fee for race and faction changes.

I'd be fine with a free one-time or once-every-X-months realm transfer, but I don't think it's necessary and I doubt it would help Blizzard out very much in the long run.

As it is now, if your server is dead, you are more than capable of creating a new character on a different server. Realm transfers are not required for you to play on a new server. That's why they call it a "service." You don't need it, but it's nice to have. Generally, these kinds of things (technically easy or not) are provided at a cost. You wouldn't expect a flower company to provide free delivery just because you spent $20 on flowers, would you?

Think of it this way: Blizzard spent dev time working on Realm Transfers. They have probably made that money back by now, but it still required a time/resource investment to create. Now consider Classic WoW, Burning Crusade, and WotLK. Blizzard has almost certainly sold enough copies of those that they recouped their development costs, right? So, why not have Classic WoW and the first two expansions be completely free?

Because that's a stupid business model -- just like allowing free realm transfers to everyone. I like free stuff just as much as everyone else, but I'm not greedy enough to suggest that Blizzard shouldn't charge for their services. I'm getting sick of these sense of entitlement that this community has.

But Classic WoW and TBC SHOULD be free at this point. It's the only way theyre going to get more subs. Part of the issue for new players is you need to now buy Classic AND TBC AND Wrath AND Cata AND Pandas.

As for transfers, got to agree with the idea of £50 bulk transfers for alts etc. And yeh, I'd say the first one should be free. The problem is worst for new players joining a "new player" realm, only to spend time leveling and "ooops! dead server!". These guys don't have alts to worry about, but are far more likely to just quit if they can't transfer to a better populated server for free. The first transfer being free would largely solve this problem.

Oh, the other time it should be free is for reactivated accounts. Players that've been gone for several months and come back only to find their server deserted. (Because they'll stick around for SURE without a free transfer.)

What if for every month you paid or some service you purchased you got some sort of "point" or "credit" that you could use toward any blizzard service or product. The whole wallet idea was interesting but it only really mattered to RMAH D3 people.

I like this idea. 1 point would be $1. You get one point each time you pay for a month of sub or a service, or purchase something from the store. Those points can then be turned into cash and used for something else.

Very very expensive for a service that most likely doesn't even need any person work to be completed.
I can see it happening that it's just an automated process that hardly requires them pushing a button, pure ripoff thus.
Also this is probly why they don't shut down dead realms or merge all the smaller ones to bigger ones.. they would loose transfer cash ....

One problem with free transfers is that the dead servers become even more dead, and queue times to log into Illidan-US will be like it's the day an expansion is released, every day, forever. Or the realm would crash and be unplayable.

My opinion is that the service is too cheap, but alas, that is not in the poll.

But Classic WoW and TBC SHOULD be free at this point. It's the only way theyre going to get more subs. Part of the issue for new players is you need to now buy Classic AND TBC AND Wrath AND Cata AND Pandas.

As for transfers, got to agree with the idea of £50 bulk transfers for alts etc. And yeh, I'd say the first one should be free. The problem is worst for new players joining a "new player" realm, only to spend time leveling and "ooops! dead server!". These guys don't have alts to worry about, but are far more likely to just quit if they can't transfer to a better populated server for free. The first transfer being free would largely solve this problem.

Oh, the other time it should be free is for reactivated accounts. Players that've been gone for several months and come back only to find their server deserted. (Because they'll stick around for SURE without a free transfer.)

but clasic wow TBC and WOTLK cost 15 euro. its just classic wow and get tbc/wotlk free. and for that 15 euro you probebly get 1 month of sub. so it doesn't cost as much as you think. and you can even alrdy play the panda race if you didn't buy MoP yet.

and it is going to cost me 60 usd to fully upgrade my us trail account. so its not as much as you think.

As it is now, if your server is dead, you are more than capable of creating a new character on a different server. Realm transfers are not required for you to play on a new server. That's why they call it a "service." You don't need it, but it's nice to have. Generally, these kinds of things (technically easy or not) are provided at a cost. You wouldn't expect a flower company to provide free delivery just because you spent $20 on flowers, would you?

Recently my guild transfered because server is nearly dead and there are like no recruits and activity going. They changed faction to. So in this case I have to pay €45 per character transfer. I dont mind having to pay for a transfer but the current cost is just ridiculous.

We have over 500 characters in the guild and if we assume that 250 transfer to the new server that would 250x45= 11.250.
There is no discount or anything at all for the guild which I find silly aswel.

The current prices and models were fine;
Before actual dead servers happened and people started leaving over it.

I do like the idea of that points system. Kind of like a loyalty program;
I can't see anybody but the people who complain about everything actually disliking this as everybody gets something eventually.

They need to do a big promotion with a bundle package for server transfers soon;
Test the waters. See how many people do it. Use that opportunity to clean up those dead servers.
If they do indeed close servers offer free extra services for those who lose their names or are forced to move.

You're paying $$$ to go into the concert thinking you're going to be able to hear the music, but instead you're stuck way out in the mud and cant even see which direction the stage is. There's something that vaguely sounds like music coming from a speaker somewhere but its nothing like the experience everyone else is getting. Now someone comes up to you and gives you the choice of either leaving, staying and 'enjoying' this, or shelling out double the amount you've already paid to enjoy the actual concert.

For a subscription MMO, players should NEVER be given the ultimatum 'get out or pay more' in order to enjoy the game.